Girl Without a Face

Published by Evernight Teen ® at Smashwords

www.evernightteen.com

Copyright© 2017 Medeia Sharif

ISBN: 978-1-77339-195-3

Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Editor: Audrey Bobak

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

GIRL WITHOUT A FACE

Medeia Sharif

Copyright © 2016

Chapter One

I brake hard on the wet road. It’s raining buckets. My windshield wipers can’t compete and there’s a sheet of water constantly on the glass. Squeak. The wipers don’t make a dent in this rain.

There’s a list of things running through my mind. Gift for friend’s birthday next week, get oil change at the place that stays open until late, and drop off some library books. Then there are the flowers. I look at the flowers in plastic I just bought … they’re lying on the passenger seat. I inhale sharply, thinking about my classmate … such a tragic death. I’ll put these at her death site.

Looking at the dashboard clock, I know I need to hurry before all these places close, and then, last thing, place the flowers at the death site. I’ll go to the library first since it closes before everything else. It might be unsafe, but I go ahead and open my text messages, anyway.

Going to library, see you later

I’m a responsible person—when I want to be—letting my parents know where I am. At a red light, my purse falls down. I curse, unbuckling my seatbelt to pull it up. Since my air conditioning is broken, the windows fog up and it’s hard to see. I roll down the window.

The condensation is relentless, so I pull a beach towel from the backseat and wipe the windshield. Now that I see better, I speed up. The red eyes of brake lights glare at me. Other drivers honk if I go around them, middle fingers are raised, and curse words drift out of open windows. I have things to do and everyone better get out of my way. Anger simmers in me, but I squash it down. This is the new me. The old me was angry all the time, which got me nowhere. It also hurt others. I regret doing the rotten things I’ve done.

When I turn on a quiet road, I speed up. The road is full of houses flashing Christmas decorations: an inflated Santa, a floppy Santa on an artificial chimney, and plenty of lights around doorways, fences, and palm trees.

It continues to pour, but no one is blocking my way with their annoying brake lights. The sky has become darker, as if Mother Nature flipped a switch. I hit the pedal some more. I’m a few blocks from Atlantic and a library that’s right before it, and I see cars are clogging the entire intersection. I groan.

A closed gas station with the store gutted and construction vehicles in front of it come into sight. Since this is a shortcut, none of this is very familiar, although I have a sensation that I’ve driven around here before. Or it could be the effect of the rain. Every wet road looks the same just about now.

The rain finally lets up, going from heavy, to a drizzle, to none at all, and I sigh. On my right, opposite of the gas station, is an empty lot with a real estate sign. The grass is wild and overgrown. There’s also one of those lollipop-shaped memorial markers next to a tree stump. It’s on the swale of the lot with a garland of pink flowers around it.

A streetlight shines on it as if it were a spotlight. I slow down, lean forward, and strain my eyes to read the name on the marker. Someone died in a car crash on this spot and I’m curious to see if it’s for the person I bought the flowers for—even though this is the last place on my list to visit, with the address written on a sticky note that’s inside my wallet. This could be the spot. If it is, I can park here, place the flowers by the marker to pay my respects, and leave.

The lettering is small. The pink flowers are bright and beautiful against a bland landscape. Their frilly petals are feminine when everything around it—gas station, construction signs, pipes, and cinder blocks—is hard and ugly. My gaze roves around the flowers and letters. I slow down some more.

I read the name aloud. D— I begin pronouncing the name and am cut short at the first syllable. My foot, which was off the accelerator, twitches back onto it and without meaning to, I’m speeding forward. My car skids and spins. I clutch the steering wheel. The tires screech and a scream is caught in my throat. Then I let it loose.

Ahhhhh! My scream is primal, forced from my lungs … no, even deeper … from my abdomen… The sound wrenches out of my mouth and into oblivion as the world becomes black.

Chapter Two

I hover on the ceiling, looking down, as if I’m a camera or a spirit watching. The school hallways are murky. They might shift any second to transform into another setting. A trio of girls is right below me. Words spew out of their mouths.

"Don’t tell anyone, but Tina’s boyfriend, Brad, is cheating on her, one girl says. She has long, straight black hair and her face is clouded over. My dream is hiding it, with all her features blurred. Tina’s such a retard that she doesn’t realize it."

"No way," Danielle says, her blue eyes widening.

"Tell us more," Krissy says. She swishes her blonde hair to the side and crosses her arms underneath her chest.

In my dream, I know the names of the other girls, but not this blurred one. They’re wearing cheerleading uniforms and all have the same kind of body: small waists and thighs that don’t touch. When the bigger girls look their way, they sneer, but not the faceless girl since she’s still blurred out, yet I imagine her sneering.

The faceless girl tells her eager listeners about how Brad was kissing and making other moves on some girl, and then Tina enters the hallway. They all hush.

Krissy hides a smile behind her hand and Danielle openly grins. When Tina’s long, brown hair sways to the side and her mouth opens into a dazzling smile, boys look her way, but she gushes about Brad. She has no idea what a dog he is. Brad bought me a single rose last night and it was so sweet … you should have seen the fancy restaurant he took me to… Tina’s eyes roll up to the ceiling as she praises her amazing boyfriend.

And I have a feeling that the blurred girl is smiling, because she was the one who slept with Brad.

****

It’s hazy, my eyes want to glue themselves shut, and I’m so high that I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. Strange dreams take place in high school hallways. Drama and bitterness between girls. It’s like a movie I want to pull away from, but I’m forced to watch it. That’s one nice thing about being in the hospital—there’s no drama. School is a horrible place with backstabbers, gossipers, and bullies. I’d be happy never to step in a school hallway again … not that I remember ever doing so. My mind has been wiped clean from the accident.

With the help of a nurse, I walk around the floor. My hip screams and my knee aches, but I want to walk. Visions of wasting away in the hospital bed scare me. What if I atrophy to nonexistence or sleep my way into death? I need to move around to feel alive, even if it’s painful.

Next door to me is an elderly woman with her leg in a cast, suspended in the air, and bandaged ribs. She tells me to call her Sydney, but I call her Ms. Mills. She was in a car accident.

In the same hallway, on the other side of me, is a man with a cast from his neck all the way down to his feet. He suffered numerous broken bones after a construction accident at his job. Heh, heh, don’t be working on any condos when you grow up, young lady, he tells me, his broken smile marked by missing teeth and graying stubble. His name is Don, but I always say Mr. Fry. I just can’t bring myself to call older people by their first name.

When I visit my two new friends, they’re in and out, sometimes sleeping or mumbling with a few moments of clarity. One hour they might talk clearly, as if nothing were wrong except for their injured limbs and torsos, and the next hour their words are slurred and their eyelids are heavy. We’re all like that on this hospital floor.

There’s a new nurse every hour, or maybe every day. I don’t even know time in this place. One woman sits glum at my bedside. She has short, curly brown hair and large emerald-green eyes. Dez, it’ll be okay, she keeps saying. You’ll be home soon.

I want to call her Mom, but I don’t know her. The few times she’s smiled, it doesn’t look right. Her smile is odd, crooked at one corner with her thin lips. She smiled differently before… I don’t have a memory, only a sensation of this. Her hair was in a different style. Her eyes were darker. She’s different, so a lot of time must have passed since I’ve been here. I don’t recall much. What’s my name? Dez, this woman calls me, and Destiny, everyone else says. My name is Destiny.

Nurses come and inject me with things. Dilaudid is the name of one of these drugs that takes me places, makes me sleepy, and causes me to slur my words. My hip hurts, the blood not just pounding but also roaring through that spot. There’s a bandage wrapped around my wrist. When the nurses change it, I see an open, oval mark there. My arm had banged against something in the crash. The crash … when my car spun and I screamed. What had I been doing out on the road?

My hip and arm are nothing compared to what’s happening on my head. There’s an egg-shaped lump on my forehead. I can’t help but touch it, even though it makes me wince to do so. It’s not just the pain, but also the fact that there’s an abnormal protrusion on my head. The other issue is my left ear. I have what one of the nurses calls a cauliflower ear. My ear was mangled when my body flew out of my car and rolled and scraped along the ground. It’s painful, but it’s better than dying in a fire, since my car smoldered into smithereens.

What had I done to myself? I must have been speeding. I might not remember anything because of my amnesia, but I have the impression that I was hasty and determined. Other bits and pieces of my personality escape me. Pumped up with drugs after my head trauma and other injuries, I don’t have a clear sense of who I am.

When I’m strong enough to walk, Mom helps me bathe in the shower nook of the bathroom inside my private room. In the mirror, I’m horrified by my shriveled ear, bump on the head—even though it’s been going down with time—and the bruises all over. My dark brown hair is curly and matted, in desperate need of brushing. My dark brown eyes are dull from the drugs with dark circles underneath them.

I’ll take care of you, Mom says. Don’t you worry. Mommy’s here.

She comes every single day. When her job needs her, she goes there during the day, but comes to my hospital room at night. There’s a chair that reclines next to my bed, and she sleeps there. Her eyes close, a pillow is squashed to the left side of her head, the side she favors when she sleeps, and a blanket covers her slender frame.

Many times, I look at her, wishing I could remember her cradling me as a little kid and saying encouraging words about my schoolwork … but there are no memories. I only know that in the hospital, she’s devoted. When I do fall asleep to her wheezing breath, it comforts me that she’s here. I’m not alone during this situation. There’s her, the nurses, the doctors, Mr. Fry, and Ms. Mills.

One evening I’m sitting with Ms. Mills, me in a chair at her bedside and her on her frozen position in bed with her casts. We’re not talking much since Ms. Mills is in more pain than usual.

Do you want me to get a nurse? I ask.

No, Ms. Mills warbles. I had painkillers right before you came in. They must have not kicked in yet.

As Ms. Mills talks, I see Mom’s form in the hallway. I think nothing of it until her face reddens and she storms in.

Dez! she cries out. The door is already open, but she bangs it into the wall. The only expressive part of Ms. Mills’s body is her face. It moves, while her limbs don’t. Her narrow, over-tweezed eyebrows elevate over her wrinkled brow. Her freckled face pales as Mom stands over me, wide-eyed. Mom clamps a hand on my shoulder.

Ouch, I say.

Her hand digs deeper. Dez, don’t disturb the other patients. Go back to bed. You shouldn’t be up.

I feel okay today, Mom, I say. At least right now I do.

She’s not bothering me at all, Ms. Mills manages to say. You must be Destiny’s mom.

Mom has her mouth clamped shut, refusing to talk to this stranger. Mom, it’s all right, I try to soothe her. My words aren’t working.

Let’s go, she says through gritted teeth, her face getting redder.

I get up because I see a scene coming on with Mom making an outburst. So far she’s been on the edge of telling off a doctor or nurse when she doesn’t get answers from them—her facial expressions are revealing—but she always calms down and remains polite. I don’t want a scene, not in front of Ms. Mills, with nurses and doctors in the hallway. Bye, Ms. Mills. Talk to you later.

Bye, sweetheart. Ms. Mills smiles in a fake way, because her eyes are wide and fixated on Mom. Her strange behavior would startle me as well.

Mom’s grip loosens. Now she just presses a hand into my lower back as she leads me to my room next door. I sit in bed and she tucks me in.